With those words Treasurer and Acting Prime Minister Wayne Swan closed the annual John Button lecture in Melbourne last night.

It is a worthy sentiment, an aspiration to which we can all relate and one with which very few in this lucky country of ours would disagree.

Mr Swan's speech, Land of Hope and Dreams, is part of a continuing thematic push that he began earlier this year with a controversial essay in The Monthly - a treatise that immediately sparked claims our Deputy Prime Minister was waging thinly disguised class warfare.

The allegations arose because of the specific swipe Mr Swan took at some of the wealthiest people in Australia, claiming they were trying to hijack the national debate out of naked self-interest as opposed to the national interest.

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TREASURER and Deputy Prime Minister Wayne Swan will use a landmark speech tonight to reinforce his argument for equality of opportunity and social equity, which when aired this year sparked claims of "class warfare".

Last night he told the Labor Party faithful that his only regret was that he had not gone in harder with his original attack on billionaire mining magnates Gina Rinehart, Clive Palmer and Andrew Forrest.

The events of the past six months, Mr Swan claimed, "have strengthened my case even further".

"In that time, the three people I named in my original essay have made my case for me by the blatantly self-interested way they have campaigned against the minerals resource rent tax - a tax which asks them to do no more than pay a fair return to the Australian people for the right to mine and export the non-renewable resources which belong to the whole nation."

He then moved to qualify his position, arguing that "I am not prosecuting class warfare, quite the opposite. My purpose is to make sure we don't get the great inequalities in our society so we can avoid the type of class conflict that we're beginning to see now in the United States and the discord that comes with that."

Again that is a laudable aim few would take issue with. The trouble is Mr Swan does his cause a disservice by seeking to demonise three prominent Australians who not only have added much to Australia's economic wellbeing, but also have much to contribute to the national debate.

Mr Swan's argument that our national polemic risks being subsumed by those with the money and the power to grab the largest megaphones is simply spurious. Just for starters it belies the very strong (and well-funded) voice of the union movement, and indeed ignores the rapidly growing - and exceptionally egalitarian - influence of social media.

If Mr Swan is truly concerned that Australia risks repeating the mistakes of America when it comes to growing inequality and lack of access to opportunity, then these sort of stump speeches to the True Believers are the wrong way to win a broader audience to the cause.

It may serve a political end in terms of repositioning the Labor brand to a shrinking support base, but the wider public will view it - despite the rhetorical qualifiers - as a personal attack on some successful Australians.

By prosecuting this narrow line of attack in what, broadly, is a wider debate worth having, Mr Swan risks fanning the flames of the very class war divisions he claims to be opposing.

It is also more than passing curious just why Mr Swan - at a time when there appears to be a rare, winter holiday lull in political hostilities - should suddenly want put the match to another fire.

MEMORIES OF GEORGE ROLL ON

ONE sure way to identify true Brisbanites is to ask them for their memories of Rock 'n' Roll George Kiprios and the cream, white-wall-tyred 1952 FX Holden he drove through the city for close to 40 years.

After George died in 2009, aged 82, businessman Scott Hutchinson bought the original car, which is now restored and on show at the Queensland Museum.

But Hutchinson has gone a step further, commissioning a faithful replica of the fragile original, which he drives around city streets. It might not by quite the real thing, but it will still put a smile on the face of anyone who remembers George and his FX cruising slowly up Queen St back in the days when Brisbane was still a town and not Australia's "New World City".

* Responsibility for election comment is taken by David Fagan, corner of Mayne Rd & Campbell St, Bowen Hills, Qld, 4006. Printed and published by NEWSQUEENSLAND. (ACN 009 661 778). A full list of our editors and journalists, with contact details, is available at couriermail.com.au/news/opinion/ourstaff.

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PRIME Minister Julia Gillard this week made a point that most Australians would agree with. Australian voters, she said, are intelligent people, implying quite correctly that the electorate generally has a pretty good bulldust detector when it comes to seeing through the often carefully choreographed cut and thrust of politics.

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